Just to practice, I wanted to modell a human hand. This time I wanted to think about
topology first and then start working ;-).
So I scanned my own hand and started sketching possible edges, considering anatomy as
far as I know (and see) it. Maybe someone would like to drop his opinion, thoughts or
sugestions about my ideas here.

I intentionally didn't use any tutorials this time but tried to figure that grid out by myself
(my main goal with this is not to model a perfect hand but to train myself to "see" proper
topology on an imaginated or real object).

The black grid is the base grid - grey lines are for detailing. Green and blue are simply for
better "readability". The little red edges at the thumb are the only direct conections
between top and bottom. I planned to connect the two with quads on the sides, who
should correspond to the outer edges of both sides (hope I made myself clear). That
thumb-reagion is critical (and the most likely for heavy rethinking, once I start to get into
modelling this).

Well, I transfered the grid into 3D and tried to tweak it into rough form. To my own joy, the connection at the thumb (marked red in the picture above) worked out quite well.
I only did minor corrections to the planned edgeflow - I don't know if this is a big success, but it definetly looks like a better start to me, than my last try at a hand (using the "grow fingers via extrusion" method).

And here a picture (just to prove I really did something, not bringing any new insights).

At least for my taste, the edgeflow on those hands served me well. A little nudge here, a little correction there...

So just to relax (similar to the relax I get, when sketching on paper) I worked on and started detailing a bit. I considered a few tiny triangles as no problem but still try not to mess up the topology too much.

So if you like to see it develop, here's a bit of progress (even if for once I don't really know what for :-) ).

The inner palm is something else..... you should work with that a bit more. I think it's a part of how you organized the upper palm... that would be the only think I would suggest to change for now. Maybe rework the the pads on either side of the hand so that they flow better.

also, you're adding too much detail and then reducing detail at the end of the hand. You might want to work in the details using more slices horizontal to the hand instead of vertical slices like you have. You can see at the ends of the hands where you group polys to create quads and that gets messy, esspecialy when you start to smooth the mesh with modefiers.

Last edited by Pieisgood : 11 November 2007 at 03:39 AM. Reason: More insight to topology problems needed

The detailing has by now only reached two fingers and that might explain the difference in detail in certain areas. On those fingers I started molding out the form just for fun and thus placed form before function.

The palm indeed needs more work (especially as the pads mentioned by you are almost nonexistant). Since I hit more problems with such simple curvations than with the clearer defined shapes in the fingers, I started there ;-).
The horizontal slices will follow but I don't see a chance to reduce the vertical ones (especially on the outer part where I need them to follow the sinews there.

Well I don't know if I understood everything correctly, but looking again at my hand (the original) and the cg-hand I found severla ways to reorder the flow of edges so it better suits the folds in the palm. My mistake was to use the flow of the sinews here, which are burried too deep to be of any significance.

I know that not everything is perfect (far from it) but for now, I'm quite satisfied with the result. I don't know if I'll give this hand another run to add more details since my first goal was to learn from it (which I did hopefully).

So if someone would like to try to shatter my confidence then simply go ahead (I think there's allways room for improvment ;-) ).

This is the mesh so far:

... and just for show and tell - a rendered version (smoothed with one subdivision via Nurbs):

Sure. Good work there. I think that drawing the topology out in photoshop or whatever, is a great way to realize the poly flow breakdown. Particularly with the complicated nauances of modeling a realistic hand. I do that for certain objects also.

Can you tell us about that new project your working on? If not, I understand. I also have a couple of projects that are close to my heart as well, it's just the time to do them have been eluding me.

Wow, looks like you have something mystrious going on there. Swamp-like. I didn't mean to hassel you for info though. Sorry if it felt that way.

Also, thanks a lot for checking out my website. I appreciate your comments. I really love painting (traditionally) and my area of focus is wildlife because I enjoy it particularly, birds as of late. I'm working on a bluebird in a dogwood tree (acrylic).

Thanks about the concept work as well. That is my profession as well as more recently modeling and texturing.

Good, if there's allready a little bit of mistery in that new work, but I'll have to eliminate the "swampfeeling" ;-) and replace it with peace (since it's far from finished there's a lot of time to work on this).

I will look in to your page, awaiting the bluebird in the dogwoods (especially as I connect some visits to NC with dogwoods - but never saw a bluebird). I'm allways impressed how some people can use real paint and not make a mess of it as I did usually (a pencil works right with me but paint of any kind seems not to be made for me).

So have fun being creative and I hope you'l find some time for those projects close to your heart.

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